Phone Artists - childrens' sculpture

Arts & Activities, May, 2001 by George Szekely

FIXING PHONES Our harvest gold '60s phone had sounded its final note--or so we thought--until Ana rescued it from the trash. As she rushed to get my toolbox, she said we should not worry, the phone will be fixed. The next morning, the plastic hull lay on her floor, surrounded by a sea of unusual small parts grouped into neat piles--the results of a careful dissection with a screwdriver.

A screwdriver is a child's chisel, their sculpting tool for looking inside things. Many flea market phones and other small appliances await dissection in our art-room fix-it shop. Some of the forms found inside the phones are appreciated and saved for their own sculptural uniqueness. Others are put together into new, futuristic phone models. Disassembling, or taking things apart, is as much a part of children's art activities as building and assembling.

A FINAL CALL We round the curve, waiting to speak into the fast-food ordering box, and I try to steer the car into position. What makes the maneuver so difficult is the children who are ready to stampede over me, wanting to be the one to call and place the order. In our art class, we use safer drive-through chairs for which children build play phones.

In a society where phones are on our belts, in our elevators and in our cars, phones have become a medium that artists cannot ignore. Children tend to be at the forefront of approaching technology with an artistic eye and freshness. Play phones provide children with a way of harnessing the magic and mystery of the medium. I share my old drive-in movie speakers, while kids show me their key-chain phones, and we jointly celebrate the art of the phone.

Professor George Szekely is Senior Professor of Art Education at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Currently, he serves as President of the Kentucky Art Education Association, and Vice President of the National Art Education Association.